


Somebody Drowned the Other Day (That Somebody Was Me)

by orphan_account



Category: Cursed (2020), Cursed (Netflix)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Religious Guilt, Sort of? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Weeping Monk was not a good man.The man is in the middle ground.Lancelot will try.
Relationships: The Weeping Monk | Lancelot & Squirrel | Percival
Comments: 11
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

Paladins are not known for their silence.

The camp, when Father Carden has marched away to hunt down the Wolf-Blood Witch, is therefore quiet.

It is not quiet after The Weeping Monk slaughters the Trinity Guard, running them through stern to stem with his sword and dagger, spitting blood from the impact of their maces against his face. It is not quiet after they fell him, only for the Monk to rise as if he was a specter, gutting the rest because of _course_ , Squirrel hadn’t run. The foolish boy had stayed behind as if his little rocks could, would, help. Yet by the end, it was evident the Widow was not done with him yet.

She was otherwise preoccupied.

They mount the Monk’s mare, Squirrel pushing him forward with the fervor of someone forcing themself to fill a recently void spot, crying for his once-captor now-savior to move, move, _run_. From there it is a panicked rush, tearing out of the Paladin camp, having to rely upon a Fey child to guide a horse that he had only ever been strewn across the back of. It worked, however, and eventually, they had disappeared into the night, leaving corpses behind.

The Monk would assume that they had followers pursuing them if he did not personally know of the weakness of the current Paladins. Almost all of the stronger ones, if they could really even be considered that, were raiding Uther’s camp. They had left behind the cowards, the weaklings.

They continue to flee, finding a path that would lead them to the coast eventually. That is, after all, where the Fey are fleeing too. Squirrel tells him so.

The Weeping Monk finds the boy to be too trusting of him. He was, after all, still a Paladin. Was he not?

No. No, he wasn’t It is almost a soothing revelation, even if it makes his wounds flare-up. 

The Monk has forsaken God. It would almost be ironic. The Monk has returned to his dirtied, Devil-blood. This too is a revelation that leaves him on the brink of smiling. Freedom. He does not know why he reacts like this. Cannot put a name to the feelings that swell in his chest.

Night bleeds into the day, yet they still run, even though the trail they leave is cold without the Monk following it.

An off-beat is drummed out from the sound of their mare’s hooves, a non-steady gait the echoes out across the wispy fields they now cross. It is a far cry from the forest and hills the camp was in. He wonders, sitting behind Percival -Squirrel? It appears he was not the only one to rename themselves, eventually.- how everything had come to this concussive change.

He knows, in his heart, that it is the Green Knight’s fault. 

The Green Knight’s words of brotherhood, spoken so freely, given for nothing in return but the hope of making sure he might understand. His own comrades, fellow killers, did not consider him a brother. They had considered him nothing more than a sword, a deeply-troubled man that was just necessity. Father Carden saw him as nothing more than a sharpened dagger, forged by the flame of a manipulator’s hand.

It is the fault of the Fey he has already killed, with their screams of betrayal a constant song in his ears, while his sword sang for the blood and carnage of a genocide built upon faith. 

It is his own fault, more than anyone else.

The mare continues down the prairie path, unbothered by his broodings, and around him, the world continues too. His body aches, cuts, bruises, and wounds whispering their pain to his bones like old companions. In some way, he supposes, that could be true. Their camaraderie is born from his years, two decades almost, of self-flagellation that stemmed from his own burning hatred for himself, taken from the words of a madman. His back screams. As does his chest. His side. Everything hurts, including his head, the words that spin within his thoughts, the scent of Fey and dust, dirt, _ash,_ and blood sticking to the inside of his lungs.

“I’m hungry,” Squirrel says eventually after they have exchanged their true names with each other. It drags him from his thoughts abruptly.

He stays quiet, wondering, wondering that if he opens his mouth, will it come out the same? Or will it be different, now that he has left the Red Paladins? Their crusade? Betrayed them, as Father Carden had always known he would?

It doesn’t last for long.

“Did you hear me?” Squirrel asks, again, twisting around in his seat to peer at him with too-wide eyes that say more than one hundred words. The child looks so small and vulnerable, one could almost forget he would not be above sticking a knife through his ‘protectors’ ribs.

The Monk wonders, again, how it had come to him forsaking his creed to protect a child.

Once again he blames the Knight.

It was always the honorable ones that made him pause.

“I did,” he says in response, the voice the same as ever. Deep. The feeling it strikes within him is not one of reassurance. “Would you have me bleed out to get you a rabbit?”

Squirrel snaps his jaw shut, glaring, thinks for a moment, then speaks again. His glaring eyes burn with thinly-veiled annoyance. “No.”

That is the end of their conversation, and they continue further down the road that is paved beneath them. Eventually, if he can remember correctly, -which is not often, unsurprisingly- it will come to a river that is fed from a waterfall. They will follow it to the shore, for a day or two’s ride.

Yet not even three hours later, when they’ve crossed too many miles to count, Squirrel steals his knife. Plucks it with nimble fingers from his belt, slips from the saddle, leaving the cloaked man to slump forward with a hiss of pain, and disappears into the dry-brush.

He returns with the carcass of a rabbit, finds a long branch to spit it on a stick, and starts a fire to cook it. They ignore the fact they could be tracked from the smoke that rises in the midday, early evening sun. The Fey boy offers some to him.

The entire ordeal is quiet. It is almost nice, if not a little odd.

The food warms his body up, and he can feel the beginning pains of healing arrive. They will have to wash his wounds at the river, most likely. It will not clean away his sins, but at this point, he wonders if He is even truly there. The Monk has never heard Him, no matter how much he has cried.

He finds that the title of Weeping Monk no longer fits. He sheds it, permanently. 

For now, he is nameless.

* * *

For the first six years of his life, his name is Lancelot.

Lancelot is a spry boy, tall and lithe with bright, gleaming eyes, a perpetual and crooked grin that splits his face into two. Even at his young age, he towers over his playmates, standing almost a head above even the tallest ones. They’ve all got tears tracking down their face, seared into their skin from the first wails that spill from their voice when they’re born. Some of his friends have them tracking sideways, into the hair at their temples, due to being on their back when they were born.

He is the only one that has all of them falling down his face in a straight line. Most likely his father's fault, there.

Lancelot has the best nose in the group, and when the children at their age play hide-catch-split, he’s quite certainly the tracker, the seeker. Some of the more competitive ones call it cheating, yet stay silent when he’s on their side. Lancelot doesn’t complain though; he’s quite happy to stay quiet if it means the game continues to play.

He’s quite happy to stay silent when the race through the woods, screaming and yelling with joy and exuberance of being free, wild. It is within their blood, freedom. The Ash Folk has hearts made of open-air so that their flames might burn forever.

His parents are a pair that fits together like a puzzle, with a strong woman and a nice man. His mother’s name is Elaine and his father Ban, with his mother leading the patrols and hunting expeditions, while his father serves as a midwife or nurse when the need arrives. They are all tall, willowy, with long, strong limbs. Their hair is not long like the Skyfolk, not braided and shaved as the Tusks. It is shorn at their shoulders, pulled into top-knots or low tails. 

Even now he does not know how he remembered that part. Everything else in his childhood is hazy.

The Red Paladins come, one day, their arrival quiet.

Noone in the Ash Folk can sniff them out. Apart from Lancelot. This is important. It is why he survives.

The Paladins reek of blood, of fire and smoke and tar, determination, and belief, passion. The Ash Folk do, too. 

It is an evening where the children are playing, gathering scrapes and bruises on their knees and legs, wrestling in the dust while braziers blast heat into the sky, fire that brings warmth and rebirth instead of purgation. The adults are strewn about, cutting open the catches of the day, sparring in some corners and wrappings sprained ankles and dislocated arms in others. They are not peaceful folk, but they are not war-mongers.

They are, however, the first blood spilled in a bloody, dirty fight that would continue for the next 15 years.

Lancelot is sitting there, bickering with two other children. One of them is named Adellan. The other was something starting with a T.

She’s as close to cute as a child can get, which is not much, and she is almost as tall as him but not quite. She also has a strong back for someone so young, already knowledgable on honor and strength and justice, adoring the human idea of Knights. Her tears track close to her nose, weeping from the corner of her crystal-blue eyes all the way to the corner of her mouth, with a stray line trailing on her temple. 

She was also lecturing Lancelot on why cheating was bad, and how he’d have to hold his nose if they were to continue to play hide-catch-split with him.

His memory, of these moments, is stolen from him. Forcefully forgotten. But he can remember some words, a few sentences here and there. This conversation is the only one that he can almost fully remember. 

The beginning is blank. It starts in the middle.

Adellan says, primly, grey eyes fanned by thick lashes glaring at him, “Lancelot, I do  _ not  _ care if you can’t help it. Ryintho can’t hide from you! It’s not fair.”

Lancelot replies, with all the grace of a six-year-old, “Ryintho stinks!”

This is not a lie. 

Adellan rolled her eyes, crossing her arms in front of her chest. To the side, the boy who’s name started with a T does this as well, although not as sure-of-himself.

“We’re not gonna play with you if you and your big nose keep cheating.”

If he remembers correctly, the scent of ash and blood got more pronounced here. Heavy. Overwhelming.

“My nose isn’t big! I’ll tell mother you said that!”

“Your mother doesn’t scare me!”

At this time there is unease within the camp when the last patrol run during daylight has not returned. The scent gets stronger, too strong. It almost feels like a stench.

“Well, she should!”

At Adellan’s side, the other boy leans over to her and whispers this: “She really should.”

Adellan scoffs, and then her stomach explodes in a shower of red. A silver blade has stabbed the front of it, digging in deeply, a brutal and effective strike.

Behind her, stands a middle-aged man, in a ruby red robe. At his side, there’s another, swiftly slaughtering the child who’s name starts with a T.

Lancelot stares, shocked, uncomprehending.

The yelling starts. He gets used to this sound, over time, but when he thinks back to the first time, bile crawls up his throat, threatens to spill past his lips, and splatter onto the floor beneath. This is where God enters his life, not so much kind and forgiving as murderous and angered. This is where years of torture will start, where the heart buried behind his protective ribcage will stop and not start again for fifteen years.

The man tilts his head, not looking at the limp form of a child at his feet.

“I’m Father Carden.” He smiles in the way that only liars can. Unbeknownst to Lancelot, this man has been observing the Ash Folk for days. He has had his sights on Lancelot for nearly all of them.

The slaughter is not quick, but it is done.

The young Lancelot does not see one of the Paladin’s take young Adellan’s body and press a burning blade to her stabwound. He does not hear her scream. He only sees her later, after years of imprisonment.

No Ash Folk is seen until fifteen years after this, not until Lancelot stumbles upon the Fey encampment with the back of his head branding him a traitor, and three Sky Folk presumed dead following him.

This first attack is, in his opinion, is the most thorough purge the Paladins have ever done.

He resolves, somewhere in the back of his mind that he ignores, that it will always be the most thorough. Even if he will never admit it, the not-quite-dead form of Adellan and his family is seared into his mind, and he will never harm a child. The Fey will never be eradicated.

No matter how much he tries, that blasphemous thought can never, will never, be whipped from his tainted body.

This rule is only shattered once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not canonic with the book, which I am currently reading through. This is most likely not canonic with the show either, as I am dumb and like to make things up. ; )
> 
> I'm also not done writing this whole she-bang! But I'm working as hard as I can. If I feel that, as I write the other chapters I need to go back and edit somethings I'll add that into the notes at the end. Just as a heads up, or some tips :O
> 
> I don't plan on having a ship for this, as I feel Lancelot is very... conflicted. And not a good person, yet. Sorry if you want that, really, but I'm currently super focused on trying to get his character down and not how he'd act with someone else.
> 
> There's gonna be some OC's in the future chapters! Just one, I think, and she's used as an insight to how Lancelot is thinking, and as to how he's going to change in thinking/understand himself. I understand if OC's aren't your cup of tea either, but I honestly kind of like her. She only makes one appearance too! 
> 
> I'm excited to finish this, and feel free to leave comments! But keep in mind I am also an Idiot Teenager so keep the critiques as polite as possible x.x Oh! And the chapter count is not fully set yet. I think it will stay four, but there might be five if I'm particularly inspired?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's child death in this!!! kinda gorey too. Please feel free to COMPLETELY skip over the second section, as it is the primary focus. please keep that in mind!! it's super gross but I needed it for Lancelot's first kill : (

Percival and the weeping man continue down their path, their midday sun bleeding into a pretty evening that colors the sky in shades of purple. The boy is busy directing the mare that trots beneath them, aware that they will need to stop soon, rest. The sweat that gathers on her flanks and thighs is a dangerous sign, and the rumblings of her stomach betray her need for food. The man, meanwhile, is slumped over. He is close to death, unsure and wary of the future. There are a few things keeping him alive right now, and the first thing upon that list is the boy.

The second is his love-turned-hatred for Father Carden, who only ever called the man by his real name to manipulate him. If the old priest is not yet dead then he himself will run him through to watch the life leave his beady eyes.

“We’ve got to stop,” Percival announces to him after they’ve continued on when their lunch was finished. His words are more of a command than an observation. “Your horse is tired.” The _I-Am-Too-And-I’d-Bet-My-Tongue-So-Are-You_ goes unsaid.

The man stops the horse, and with all the grace of someone walking a fine-line of death and life, slips off of the horse. Falls is closer to the truth. “Alright,” he wheezes, secretly amendable and paying no heed to the unsure look the young boy shoots at him. 

“Are you going to sleep on the dirt?” Percival asks, miffed. He looks at the man as if he is stupid.

That is most likely a fact.

“Of course,” he replies, then sits down heavily on the mentioned dirt path.

As expected, Percival does not look impressed. But then again, when has the child ever looked happy or anything apart from pensive in the presence of the man?

“Move,” orders the child. 

He moves, and instead of sitting in the path, he is now sitting just- _off_ the path. His feet still hang into it.

Percival is, from what he can decipher, still not impressed. He finds himself not truly minding however, for this small act of rebellion is the most he has ever been able to get away with.

“You’re a right bastard, you know that?” The child asks, sitting down with a thump. He is not next to the Monk, is instead just out of arm’s reach. 

“I’ve been told that before,” he replies, wincing when one particularly nasty stab-wound flares up. 

They should build a fire. He starts to get out his knife, a flint-steel and scrounges around in the dirt for a stick. Percival watches this all impassively, distaste on his face more than evident. 

“Are you going to die?” Squirrel asks, and that is the first thing he has said all day that has the man stopping, and look at him with narrowed eyes.

“No. I do not believe so,” he eventually says in response, scrambling to grab a rock to line the brush that is collected. He is content to end the conversation there, except it appears that Percival refuses to ever let anything go.

“I don’t think I’d enjoy you dying, but I don’t think I’d hate it.”

The man returns his attention to the boy, steel-colored eyes thoughtful. “Good. Keep it that way.”

He then returns to the fire, striking sparks so that it might alight. 

Percival speaks. Again. 

“But I also think that if I had rosemary or chamomile, then I would barely hesitate to help you.”

When the man listens closer, it almost appears as if the boy is confused at his own words, as if he had not expected to feel strongly. Or is it not quite strong, not yet? It strikingly reminds him of himself, and the comparison has him slinking back, staring at the gentle flames that now lick at the sky in front of him. The taste of its smell is comforting on his tongue. He throws a few more sticks in the hearth.

The child opens his mouth, and the man wonders if children ever shut up. Or is it the Fey, in particular, that doesn’t? He has never had this problem.

He stills. He has rarely thought of the Fey in any way that was not filled with anger or sadness or both, and it has never been... _teasingly_.

“I should hate you.”

“You should.”

It is barely a second later that he responds to Percival’s admittance, not dragging his eyes away from the fire. He is reminded of a nicer time when his only worries were his nose not allowing him to play a child’s game.

“I don’t.”

“Do you ever quiet?” he snaps, mouth pulled back with the beginning of a snarl, tensing like a spooked cat.

The child looks almost afraid, but he also looks to know that the man is already bluffing. The man would not hurt him. Not while he was still under the age of thirteen years, at least. After that, it would be a free game.

“Not in the least!” The child quips back, and that is the beginning of a troublesome smile forming. It is… disarming, almost, and he wonders at the feeling of protection that shoves shards into his already lacerated back. He would kill for this Fey boy. The thought is alarming, but he cannot find the energy to _become_ alarmed. Instead, the man leans back, taking off his cloak and shoving it underneath his head for a makeshift pillow. He naturally attempts to hide the brand-mark seared into the crown of his head.

With the lull in the conversation, the only sound is the crackling made by the yellow-orange fire.

“Go to sleep,” The man says, quietly, one of the few times he has spoken without pushing. He knows Percival will have heard him. “I’ll keep watch.”

And then, predictably, the boy bares his teeth. He cannot see it laying on his back, but the gesture is felt anyway, hanging in the air with its scent. “I’ll take the second shift.” He hisses. Then, said as an after-thought, spoken with a sense of pride tinged with sorrow and remembrance. “I _am_ a knight after all.”

The man sighs, and says, wearily, “Sleep. I will… wake you.”

He is not telling the truth, and he thinks the boy knows this. Yet he can still hear the sounds of the child moving, his body dragging against the coarse dirt as he curls up as close to the flames as he can before getting burnt. The man will not wake him, but the man will keep watch. Even if he must stay awake the entire night.

It is, in the end, not the entire night.

It is instead a few hours later, when the moon has almost reached its peak for the middle of the night, and the flames are still crackling. Not as large a blaze as earlier, but still sustained. Thriving. He is beginning to think that for a few of his wounds he will have to sear them together to get them to fully close. They are not knitting as fast as he would like, and he worries about how the boy would react if his protector was to die. Bugs dart around the air, a moth or two flitting around the only light source for miles. The smoke blends into the clouds above them. The entire ordeal is close to peaceful.

As the thoughts spin in his brain like the bugs around the flame, the scent wafts first. It is the scent of salt, mixed with blood and sweat. Labor. Then, moments later, the sound of a wagon's wheels turning upon the earth. He would like to say that this where he snuffs out the fire, awakens Percival, and tells him to get down and stay quiet. None of that occurs. The man, instead, rises to sit up and unballs his cloak. He turns his head to where the wagon is coming, slinging the fabric over his form, and waits.

It crests the hill, the horses at the front appearing. It is rounded, with a single man sitting in the front, directing the two aforementioned, roan horses that even from so far away are showing signs of fatigue. The wagon is neatly made, expensive probably, and it rumbles as smoothly as it can across the uneven ground. Strips of fabric hang from the side, pretty purple, and Fuschia colors tainted by the midnight of little light.

The fire still burns. It is a beacon, and as the wagon continues down its path, the man that sits at the helm waves an arm high above him in greeting.

He supposes that he will have company in a few moments.

Percival is snoring.

The wagon stops, right by their little encampment by the side of the road. The man, who, as far as he can tell now, is not actually a man but a woman, peers at them curiously. She is dark-skinned and has a forest-green cap atop her head that seems to be hiding the majority of her thick hair. She smiles.

She also has a knife at her belt that reeks of blood taken from the throat of a human.

“Hello there,” she says as a greeting, wide eyes glinting. “You lads alright there?”

The man thinks that if he were to attack her, she’d put that knife right through his throat then continue on her merry way. He also thinks that in his wounded state that she might be able to just attack him, put that knife right through his throat, then continue, again, on her merry way. 

“Just fine,” he finally replies, voice scratchy from hours of disuse and faux-rest. 

And then, like a gnat, she slips from her wagon to instead stand right next to it. She offers him an off-center grin. Her front tooth is half-chipped and crooked, while her canines appear much too sharp. They are almost blindingly white. He is not sure how she manages this. “Mind if I join you? These big boys need some rest.” She pats her horses on the neck, and he is reminded of Percival once comparing his own face to a horse.

He does not see the resemblance.

She seems to take his silence for an answer, and thumps bodily down next to the fire, taking a knife from her belt. She cleans underneath her fingernails, before peering up at him with critical eyes.

She does not comment on his tears.

He does not comment on her teeth or particularly ugly hat.

“So,” she begins, and he has a sudden feeling she will speak more than even Percival. “What’re you and your son doin’ out here so late? There’s a big fight between the Red Bastards, what looks like more Fey, and even the… probably False King?”

He startles at her referring to Percival as his son, as he has not seen her glance at the child even once. It is disconcerting, to witness a perception he had not accounted for. He also startles at her calling the paladins bastards. While he can admit it is true, he will also admit that just over forty-eight hours ago he had felt a compelling pride in them that would rouse even a dead man. He can admit that over forty-eight hours ago, he would have probably killed her for saying that.

“I betrayed my oath and slaughtered members of the Trinity Guard. We are on the run.”

She tilts her head back, laughs, loudly. It does not echo. She has a nice neck, long and slender, connected to pronounced collar-bones. There is also a jagged scar bisecting her throat, that looks like it would have been a killing wound. He is unsure of how she isn’t dead.

“You’re funny, aren’t you?” she questions, peering at him critically. Despite how loud she is, it seems that the child hasn’t awoken, even if her laughs had whipped out across the fields. “But since it appears you _aren’t_ going to ask, I’m a hide trader. You meet all sorts of folk out on these roads. You don’t have to worry about the truth about you and your boy.”

He is, suddenly, remembering the last hide-trader he had met. He remembers the slick feeling of a snake's blood coating his hands, foreign words rasping out, and the feeling of a child launching onto his back and biting. He remembers slaughtering everyone there, but he also remembers not mentioning the girl to the other paladins. They had clapped him on the back in pride, the thrill of the hunt rushing the blood, all while his chest had burned at the thought of purposefully letting one run.

“You aren’t smuggling Fey, are you?” He asks. She does not have to respond, for he cannot smell any of them. It is just the three of them out here. 

“Depends on who’s asking,” she quips in response, mirth dancing on her features. He has a feeling it is fake. She smells of lies and sweat.

The night around them is still dark. It makes... _this_ feels unsafe.

“Let’s say the bastards are,” he says, wanting to push her. See where she would go. She is, after all, no one. She does not matter, in the scheme of things. Just a drop in an ocean. But people would share her opinions, wouldn’t they?

She pauses, looking at him critically. She smiles. It is still crooked. “Alright. The little Red Paladins are knocking on my door, asking if I’m carrying Fey across the lines? I say no. It’s the truth. All the while though, I’m wishing I am. Guess why.”

He pauses, and cannot come up with an answer. This feels almost personal. “Why?” he ends up asking.

“You were supposed to guess,” but she does not sound angry. “The answer is: I _hate_ them. The Paladins. Extremists, the lot of them. I’m blasphemous, you could say. I’d be burned right with the Fey. But you want to hear something funny?

“I’m a Christian.

“Or, in their eyes, some devil-version of it. I pray to the same God, the same Holy Spirit and Son. They tell us to love our neighbors. Yet do the paladins? No. It does not feel like it. I would not kill a deer for sport, for it has no thoughts. It had not wronged me. The Fey have not wronged me. We are supposed to share with the uneducated what is _right_. They do not have to be slaughtered. They could cleanse their souls through learning, worshipping. Killing is not the answer. Trust me.”

He doubts, suddenly, that anyone would share her opinions. She is right: blasphemy seems to run in her thoughts as if it were a deer in the woods. Some of it makes sense; much of it does not.

She smiles, again, and he can see the fervor that rests in the eyes of some of his old brothers. But instead of wanting to kill, she seems to feel educating would have been a better idea. He does not know what the best idea is. He does not dwell on her plea to trust him, for he has killed enough people (too many) to understand.

“So you’d have them convert the Devil-born?” he asks because he is masochistic. 

She shrugs. “I don’t care, really. Leave them alone. I would not even have thought of them if it hadn’t been the church crying for their blood. The paladins have convoluted our scripture, but that is the problem of worshipping our religion. A thousand-year-old book is bound by the dusty past. We are in the present, and then we will be in the future.”

He stays silent, and next to him the scent of Percival changes. The boy is awake. The boy stays still, not wanting to alert the newcomer he is awake. The boy will likely have some thoughts to her referring to Christianity as _ours_. Silently, he ponders how much longer he will call him the boy.

“The future?”

“I would love to see it.”

“You don’t think you will?”

“I think that I will see some of it, but that I will not see today one hundred years ahead. But I know that I will die knowing I have helped everyone I can, and maybe then I will be welcomed into the light despite my disagreements while alive.”

He thinks, in the low-light, she looks a bit feral. A bit crazy. He wonders how much of her words he should take to heart. He is unaware that he has already absorbed too much.

“Bah! Enough of that depressing talk. You and me, we are the same aren’t we?”

“Are we?” 

“Too many disagreements! Tell me, how do you live with it?”

She is talking about killing. Suddenly, the stench of her blood-crusted knife that is still cleaning the dirt underneath her fingernails is overwhelming. The picture of it being embedded within his throat, while Percival, awake with his eyes closed and listening, is one that flashes in his mind.

“You just do.”

He has a feeling she has killed less than him, and that her kills were just necessity. But that does not stop him from continuing, the lateness of the night causing his thoughts to reveal and tongue to loosen as his eyes droop from weight. The noise of horses biting at dry grass heightens, and the low hiss of a campfire is the percussion to his unraveling.

“People will tell you that after the first kill it never gets easier,” his voice falls a bit here, twisting in wryness. “They are lying. Once you have seen the blank eyes of the first person you’ve killed, they all start to look the same. Faces bleed into another. After the tenth, it is almost like killing cattle. It will take from you, every kill, and after a while, it will have taken so much that you just live with your carnage.”

She looks at him, and her expression could almost be described as unsure. Scared. There are still hints of her own ferality, however.

“I do not believe that to be normal.”

“No. It most likely isn’t.”

“You weren’t joking about killing some of the Trinity Guard, were you?”

Silence.

A low whistle.

Percival turns to the other side, still awake. Listening.

“I have to say, I do think you are one of the most interesting people I’ve ever come across.”

“You have not come across many.”

“I take offense to that!”

“Good.”

“You’re terrifying, for sure.”

He doesn’t respond.

“What’s your name?”

He doesn’t respond.

“One of those situations, then? I get the feeling that you just haven’t found the right one yet. Reclamation always works for me and my friends.”

He doesn’t respond.

She seems to finally understand this is the end of their conversation, and she slowly folds away her knife. The scent of it retreats, but not much. “You and your son stay safe out there, then. I’ll be out of you two’s hair by the morn.”

And then, foolishly, she turns upon her side and lays down near the campfire. Attempting to sleep. Back to him, as if believing he would sooner protect her than kill.

The man leans back, returns to his earlier position. He will fall asleep, he knows, because Percival is sitting up now. Percival will keep watch for her. Apparently the child will be getting to do the night-shift he wanted. The man tries to relax and falls asleep with the memories of the blank look of crystal-blue eyes with a stray line at the temple.

When he wakes in the morning, the woman is gone.

He never does get her name.

* * *

The first time Lancelot kills someone, he is just on the cusp of eight years old. His victim is no Paladin, nor is it a Fey that he is fighting in a village purge. Instead, it goes like this.

After two years of training with the Paladins, he is not fully indoctrinated within it. Most of them are older than the boy. They are all upward of fourteen, fresh-faced recruits who are here for the money, the glory of God because he has reached out to them in a fever dream when they were deathly ill, or sick, or poor. They look at Lancelot, not knowing that he is Fey, and they see an orphan that their holy, kind leader Father Carden has taken in as his son. His student.

You would think that the knowledge of his Fey heritage would spread, especially around such a superstitious lot. Father Carden made sure it was impossible. Every Paladin that had been on the mission to purge the Ash Folk from existence was… dead. Suspicious circumstances for most of them, dying in battle for a select few.

It is an evening when Father Carden collects the young boy and brings him to a tent that he had only ever seen in passing. His nose knows it, however, because it reeks of blood and urine, fear, and despair. It wafts out across the entire encampment that the Paladins have set up in this particular area. 

Lancelot is… nervous. Nervous would be the best word.

“Where are we going, Father?” The young boy had asked, looking to the Priest like he was the water in an oasis.

Two years of abuse, gaslighting, _torture_ had warped the child. He could no longer recognize friend from foe- or more specifically, blood from the spiller. Some part of his mind still screamed, wanting to kill these men just as they had slaughtered his family and friends.

The other part wanted to fit in, to find a way to forget everything bad that had ever happened. This part had won, and for the rest of his life, he’d rage at how weak he’d been. Even if, in the end, it had just been a means to survive.

“Do you trust me?” Father Carden asks.

 _No._ Screams the sensible part of him.

“Yes,” answers the traitor.

“Good,” the man replies, and his smile is filled with the venom of a man so full of hatred it leaks from his own throat to stream through his teeth.

They continue to the tent, and it is a pretty red color, the same as nearly every fabric that surrounds it. There is nothing inherently special about it, but as mentioned, Lancelot can smell the pain and death that surrounds it. Outside there are two paladins, who offer grim nods to their Father, and from the inside is a low moan of pain.

He almost believes he can recognize the voice.

Entering the tent makes him reel back, the stench overpowering. Later on, he’ll be able to handle this smell, after bringing one too many Fey into it and turning his back on them. But for now, the boy stuffs down the urge to throw-up this morning’s breakfast, swallowing down bile. 

There are two figures within. One is a dark-skinned man with eyes that are sewn shut, most likely in the late ages of his second decade. The second is strapped to the chair, bruised and bloody beyond recognition. An eye is swollen, and there is blood crusted around their nose. They are the one that reeks of piss, blood, and anger. Fire, too, but in this camp, that is not too surprising a smell.

Father Carden slowly pushes Lancelot farther in, passing the young boy a long dagger.

Lancelot gets a slow, sinking feeling in his chest when the one functional eye of the beaten person cracks open to stare at him.

“Lancelot?” They- no, _she_ , asks, confused and sounding hopeful. As if she has seen something that makes her want to cry in joy, stand up on her lacerated feet, and cheer.

It takes two beats for the boy to recognize her, one to turn his head and hunch over hands on his knees, and an uncountable amount to breathe as deeply through his nose and mouth so he did not throw up.

While he does so, Father Carden steps forward, walking menacingly toward her. She cowers away, but Lancelot does not see this as he presses his eyes together so he might forget hers.

“Adellan, was it not?” The man asks, voice a saccharine lie. 

The Lancelot of this current moment does not focus on this, does not realize this is a point in his life he will always remember. That he will always turn around to look back at it and wonder what he could have done better. Instead, this eight-year-old child clenches his eyes together, bowed in half, and barely listens.

The Lancelot of decades passed focuses on the words Father Carden has spoken. It is important, for it means he has either spent time in this tent, torturing the girl and bothering her when she was not being tortured or that she had been a dead-girl walking for over two years, living through the longest, drawn-out death one could imagine. It was so long, that her killer hadn’t even known he would kill her. It is important because it shows that their hatred ran so deep, they’d like to traumatize, kidnap a victim of their bigotry, and train him into a dog that would kill his own for nothing more than a few words and comfortings of their silent God.

From what he can hear, she spits at his feet. It is dry. He does not want to think about the last time she had a drink.

Father Carden tuts his tongue but waits patiently for Lancelot to straighten up.

When the boy does so, he stands with the dagger in his hand and an idea for what is going to occur. An idea he hopes will not be true, but from the brutalized state of his old friend could very well be possible.

“The devil takes many forms, Lancelot,” Father says as he moves even closer to the girl, leaning forward to grip her chin harshly in his hand. Doing so seems to rip open a wound on her collarbone, that begins to weep blood. It reeks. “Come here.”

The boy moves forward, standing like a wraith the man’s shoulder. Despite not being the one with her chin in grasp, Adellan’s focus seems to entirely be upon Lancelot. She looks at him pleadingly- pleading for what, he can only guess.

“She has a sweet face, looks like a child you could see in a village. Doesn’t she?”

He can only nod in response, and something in Adellan’s face starts to become _terrified_.

“Lancelot, what’s going on?” She asks as if finally realizing the boy was not here to be her savior. That he and his eight years of glory were not going to kill all of the men keeping her hostage, that they were not going to escape together. “Lancelot?”

“Do you see how she begs?” Father asks as if Lancelot could focus upon anything else as she starts to babble words and sentences from fear, the whites of her eyes the brightest thing in the room. “You must be strong.”

“Lancelot, please!” she begs, and it gets loud enough it could almost be a scream. His clammy, baby-chubbed fingers grip the dagger tighter. She knows what is going to happen, just as he knows he will _have_ to do it. There can’t be another choice. Right? “You don’t have to do this, just stab him and we can _go_!” Her words are almost too fast to understand but form the tensing of Father Carden he understands that they all know what she is saying.

For a moment, he ponders it. 

The next he starts to cry.

Silently, of course, as he has been taught to do, but the tears come crawling down his cheek anyway. He does not know if he is crying for her, or for the pressure of what to do, or for himself having to witness this. Or perhaps because he is too weak to kill her and then himself.

Father Carden looks over his shoulder, at Lancelot, as Adellan continues to writhe and push away, ugly, dry sobs starting to wrack from her body.

“KIll her, Lancelot, and defeat this Devil.”

There is a stillness to the tent after that, and the stillness comes from the child who has already been dead for two years. She has given up, accepted her death and the wounds it will come with.

Lancelot is still crying, and his chest threatens him with a sob.

But he steps forward anyway, as the Father steps back and puts a hand on his shoulder.

Adellan looks at him with betrayal in her blue eyes, whipping through emotions too fast to understand after than. Apart from betrayal. He has seen it before, when they cheated in games, but never like this. “Traitor,” she spits, directly onto Lancelot’s face. “Do it then. You always were a _dog_.”

She has had two years to grow resentful.

She is too young. He is too young.

He slips the knife between her ribs anyway, and he can tell it will not be a swift death. He has missed, and he cannot bring himself enough strength to take it out and stab her again for mercy. But she has leaned back, as if she cannot feel the pain anymore, and glares at him with such hatred it is all he can do to scream and disembowel Father Carden to find an outlet for his own rage.

“God is love,” Father Carden whispers to Lancelot as he cries, the dagger slipping from his grasp, wet with Adellan’s blood. She gurgles beneath him, eyes filled with betrayal and crying tears of her own. They are twin looks of pain. They are both dying here. The torturer with his eyes sewn shut has left the room, intent upon finding a new piece of meat to carve, uninterested in the making of his own eventual killer. “God is love, my son, and his love purifies us. He has seen you, tonight, and looked past your tainted blood.

“For now.

“Your tears today have shown us that it will always hinder you, that we can not ignore the tears you have every day, stained upon your face.”

Lancelot looks up, hiccuping as he does so. In the low light of the room, he’d like to say Father Carden looks holy. As if that could perhaps that could make his own guilt feel less. But instead, all he sees is a man, mortal and filled with evil, backlit by his flames of anger. He sees what he believes would be said is the Devil if anyone dared speak against the man. He sees a sight that will haunt him for his later years, but fill his early ones with righteous wrath at the Fey. At himself.

“My dear Lancelot, your marks are a curse you will _constantly_ fight against. I pray for you, as do all our brothers, whether they know it or not. But tonight is also a night we can rejoice. One more Fey burnt from this land. And by your hand.”

“Tonight, you are reborn.” And then, an order. It is filled with the hysteria of a man who has finally found someone who he can control, fully, and someone that he intends to _use_. “Kneel.”

He kneels, unable to think for himself now.

“You will take your vows tomorrow when the sun first appears. But your postulancy and novice-ship are over. I am proud of you, just as He is. You will reflect, and when you rise, you will be known as the Weeping Monk. Never forget _what_ you are. You cannot escape it, but you can lessen your punishment in Hell.”

None of this fills him with comfort, but as the years pass he will become so brainwashed by hate that it will seem like a gift. He was given this chance, to kill and purge the Fey so that his immortal soul might be saved as much as it could. He was lesser, but he could help.

He kneels there, for hours, after Father Carden has left.

He kneels there long enough to hear Adellan finally die. He knows that she is dead this time.

He kneels there long enough for his leg to go numb.

He kneels there long enough he runs out of things to pray for. 

When he arises, he chances one look at Adellan. Traces the marks that are almost mirrored on his own face, stares at the blank crystal-blue eyes that even now he can feel the anger and betrayal and confusion from. He burns it into memory.

He spends long enough trying to memorize her face, that after, whenever he kills anyone, it is the only thing he can see.

After you have the eyes of the first person you have killed, they all become the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: The Weeping Monk's people in the book were called Ashers! Sometimes Ash Men. :D I'd go through and edit this, but I'm lazy, just found that out by skimming interactions in the novel I haven't read it, and also I'm lazy again.
> 
> RELIGION IS HARSH. I share pretty much none of the views in this, at all. The woman is a weird outlier, and then Farther Carden is an evil bastard. The children are victims. Screw Brother Salt.
> 
> Uhhh I didn't spend as much time editing the second bit because I wanted to get it out!1! I'll probably come back to it later? The comments and kudos from the last chapter had me blushing because like... wow,, some people actually liked this ! holy crap ! absolutely shocking and scary.


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